Angels in America
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Movie Reviews of Angels in America
Movie Review: In the new century, I think we will all be insane.
Summary: 5 Stars
Set in the 1980s, on the brink of this "syndrome", we follow the story of several people as they intertwine, interweave, and co-exist in a world frightened of the new millennium. It explores the a series of themes like individuality, friendship, love, fear, death, life, evil, and most importantly heaven. God has left us, abandoned us, as this film would say, as Republicans beat down the door in Washington and create rules set forth by old white men with a passion for reliving the past. The world, especially America, has become a very cold place. As the millennium approaches, Prior Walton must choose whether he wants to become the next prophet for the angels. He must decide, alone and scared, if he is ready for the challenges that await him. He must choose for all of us.
If you watch this film, no matter if you believe in what you see or agree, you will react. That is the ultimate pleasure of this film. It causes a reaction in its viewers. Pulitzer Prize winning Tony Kushner develops this reaction thanks to an intelligent script and story about our world. This was more than just a movie, it was more a cautionary tale of our lives. It explores so many possibilities (all most too many to name) between religion, culture, race, economy, politics, and power. An aspect of this film that pulled at my heart and mind were the words that came from our actors mouths. This is not your normal grunt and sputter dialogue, this was imaginative, bold, and extremely provocative.
This jumbled mess of a review is my simple attempt to trivialize this massive film. Angels in America is one of those films that should be enjoyed with a glass of wine, open friends, and an open mind. This film insights ideas and challenges thought. That is why I loved the play so much, I have a passion for reading literature that breaks the cultural norm. That shows us, the American public, what we are afraid to look at in that dark alleyway. Angels in America, the play, did just that. Thankfully, director Mike Nichols does not sway from that vision. He beautifully gives us each detailed image as if it were the last. Not only is the cinematography, should I say, exceptional (it is a very small word for the truth), he has quite possibly the best actors working for him. Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, the AMAZING Jeffery Wright, the OSCAR WORTHY (if a film) Justin Kirk, and the powerful Emma Thompson, all giving more than 110% for this film. It is films like this one is the reason why I love cinema. When you have a film that goes beyond the mindset of the average American, you have already won the battle. You film will stand out and speak to a new audience about the truths that surround our lives.
In case you haven't noticed, I loved this movie. Love is such a small word. I adored this film. This is one of those films that you will remember forever and want to watch again (all six hours of it) over and over. The story is so tight that it pulls you in from the opening scene and doesn't sugar coat anything. This is reality that just happens to be picked up by a camera. This is a story about America, our America, and the relationships that surround us. This film is like going into a history museum and seeing modern day images of our pilgrims. Angels in America is the story of a new breed of settlers, crossing a new uncharted America, looking for a land that is not corrupt, evil, and sinister. They are looking for their own utopia, much like our fathers before us.
Groundbreaking. This deserves every award it receives.
Grade: ***** out of *****
Movie Review: Brilliant and superb -- a great adaptation from Broadway
Summary: 5 Stars
I was fortunate to travel to New York City in November 1994. I saw a number of things on Broadway since I knew I was not likely to return anytime soon (as I haven't). One of the things I managed to see was "Angels in America." I knew it had won a Tony Award in 1993 as well as a Pulitzer Prize and I knew that it was Tony Kushner's lengthy play in two parts, his "Gay Fantasia" about the AIDS epidemic.
I saw Part I "Millenium Approaches" at a Saturday matinee and went for an early dinner afterward, returning to the theatre to see Part II "Perestroika" that night. It was an amazing day. The dialog was riveting. I laughed uproariously at the witty lines and found tears in my eyes at other times. I'd never seen a play with as much to say and with such a delightful premise. A lot of what happened was pure fantasy and it made a wonderful nonliteral vehicle through which ideas could be presented and discussed and profound questions asked.
Nearly 10 years later, the DVD version of HBO's adapation reached me and just a few days ago, I spent yet another Saturday watching both parts of "Angels in America."
I cannot praise the adaptation enough. Cinematic values were topnotch. The acting was superb. And 95% of the original play remained intact, thanks to the fact that Tony Kushner adapted the screenplay himself from his original live play.
Most of it has worn well with time, though many of the ideas presented, though still of great importance, are no longer as fresh as they once were. Too bad it took 11 years to bring the play to the screen, but infinitely better late than never.
I gather a number of people were bored or offended in some way by this play. So I would caution potential viewers NOT to bother with "Angels in America" if:
1. You think a fantasy can't present ideas and questions.
2. If you don't have a sense of humor in the face of the AIDS epidemic.
3. If you need to hold gay men and lesbian women as bad and wrong in order to validate your own negative experience of self.
4. If you're so far to the right politically that a liberal viewpoint -- or any viewpoint markedly different from your own -- strikes you as unpatriotic and subversive.
5. If you're very conservative in religious interpretation and you need to take everything literally -- specifically, if you think that a fantasy involving angels who are sexually stimulating and the idea of an absent God is anything other than a literary device.
6. If words bore you and listening to dialog puts you to sleep.
Really, there are other DVD's to rent or purchase and if this is going to bother you, well, life is just too short to be miserable and blame it on others.
As to the subject matter and those unfortunate people who think this movie is HBO's version of "Touched by an Angel" or something, well, the original play made headlines, won a Tony award on TV (with a scene re-enacted on the awards show), won awards and was much discussed. A movie title will seldom tell you much about the plot of a film, so you might want to look something up if you missed the publicity the first time around.
Three cheers for HBO, for Tony Kushner, and for a superb ensemble of actors. The number of Emmys won by this production says it all. Excellent, amazing, superb, surprising, extraordinary, worthwhile. Not for everyone, I suspect, but three cheers to HBO for doing something not designed for the uncaring, the easily bored or offended.
Movie Review: A Panopoly of Talent
Summary: 5 Stars
Part One: THE MILLENNIUM APPROACHESTony Kushner's ANGELS IN AMERICA created a major sensation when it was produced in the mid 1980s in New York and Los Angeles (and subsequently in theaters across the country). Not only is this a magnificently written drama whose seed lies in the agar plate of America in the time of Reagan, AIDS, post-Vietnam trauma, and general angst, it is presented in a long, two part production that demands much of the audience - not only in physical endurance, but in emotional vulnerability. That Kushner succeeded in making his points is evident in the continuing productions of his bipartite play. And now HBO has granted Director Mike Nichols a huge budget, his choice of the finest actors available, and an uncut presentation of this historically important work for television audiences. Yes, the experience is different when the play is transformed to film, but this transformation was with the complete blessing of Kushner so we must accept that this version is on target with Kushner's concepts.
The story is so well known that it need not be summarized, other that it is a series of messages about mortality, moral decline, the exigencies of dealing with AIDS as a paradigm for the possible extinction of the human race, or more poetically - the millennium, and the importance of connection between souls in a time of terror. The cast is superb - yes, different from the stage production with the exception of the brilliant Jeffrey Wright - and Mike Nichols draws performances from such luminaries as Meryl Streep (a rabbi, as mother of the main character, Ethel Rosenberg), Emma Thompson (a street bum, the nurse, and the Angel Messenger), Al Pacino (in an inordinately affecting portrayal of the usually despicable Roy Cohn), Mary Louise Parker in her finest acting performance to date, and Justin Kirk as the lead. All of the "minor" roles (such as the uncredited Michael Gambon, Patrick Wilson, etc) are played to perfection, the appearance of delusional characters is splendid in a surreal, theatrical fashion, and the visual effects are compelling.
After this satisfying Part One THE MILLENNIUM APPROACHES it is with great anticipation that we await Part Two PERESTROIKA. The play/film deals with challenging ideas and it is to the audience's credit that the work is being so well accepted. But enough said. The true brilliance is in the poetic writing of Tony Kushner who deserves every kudo and award available for this daring and provocative and wholly poignant masterwork.
Part Two: PERESTROIKA
Part Two of Tony Kushner's brilliant adaptation of his own play ANGELS IN AMERICA is in many ways more compelling than Part One, due in part to the stunning visual effects afforded film vs stage, but also because of the heightened writing level for his characters. The actors continue to create wholly three dimensional characters, each surpassing their own high standards. The lines are delivered in a near
Shakespearean manner - but then the lines are WRITTEN with a near Shakespearean quality! (...) three hours of an extended tale requires more room than this space allows. But the message is clear: ANGELS IN AMERICA is the most important work to appear on television. Mike Nichols direction, Thomas Newman's musical score (rapturously orchestrated by Thomas Pasatieri), and all the creators of the special effects and cinematography deserve Emmy Awards and more. This is simply brilliant theater and it will be available on DVD soon.
Movie Review: The future could have been so much better than our present
Summary: 5 Stars
Welcome to New York in Reagan's time, in the days when Reagan declared that AIDS was a divine punishment to homosexuals. And AIDS are taking their toll on gay men in New York City. All kinds, from the prudent to the careless, from the loving and lovable to the hateful and spiteful. But indeed the film is not about that, them and their types, or even those who can afford AZT or not. It is about love and what love can be, how love can be revealed when confronted to some treachery, or what looks like some treachery though it is only fright in front of the disease for some or coming out of the closet for others. Add to that a new born homosexual who is a reaganite and a mormon at the same time, which is a lot against his new birth and a clear cut condemnation that will prevent him from being properly baptized and christened. Add to that a mormon mother taken in the whirlwind and whirlpool of this revelation and confrontation to death and how she will be able to cope for one and even save the day of several of them, including her own son. But even so, that's only one little part of the film. It then plays on the visions some have, on the angels some can see, all angels of death. Those angels take the shape of Ethel Rosenberg for the lawyer who managed to get her death penalty. The angels also take the shape of a real female angel with wings and all that is able to take a couple more to their death, lead them to the ladder, Jacob's ladder that leads straight up to heavens. But that both Christian and Jewish imagery and symbolism is not enough to satisfy the baroque taste of the director. Heaven is not going to be the garden you may think it is. It is a vast ruined temple and city where some clerk or even bureaucrats are managing the fate of the dead from behind a long table piled up with files and papers, and the prophet who is probably not as Jewish as many others refuses to abide by their decision and demands more life and he does go back to life, he resurrects in a way. And this leads to the end of Reagan, of the cold war, the perestroika and Gorbachev, and a new era in the world. If only they could have known this new era was going to lead to eight years of absolutely nightmarish regression, two wars, and a lot of terrorism amplified and multiplied by the war-mongering of a vengeful tribe of American politicians who did not deserve to be appointed to their positions, and I say appointed since they were not elected properly, at least for those who should have been elected. In retrospect the joy of 1990, January 1990 mind you, hardly three months after the fall of the Berlin Wall was going to be rather short-lived and be buried in the sex-play of a president and then the bellicose vengeful adventures of another. Altogether by far nearly sixteen years lost to the phantasms of two men. Yes the angels are in America, the angels of death that give you a wet dream first and lead you to death afterwards, the little death and the big death unified in one single jump into empty space and the fall through the cosmos. An amazing film that seems to reflect a whole period and at the same time to express the distantiation we have been able to build thanks to nearly twenty years of crisis and plain at times painful living.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Movie Review: Moving, compassionate and extremely weird. I loved it!
Summary: 5 Stars
This epic 2003 HBO mini-series, adapted from the award-winning Broadway play by Tony Kushner and directed by Mike Nichols, is moving, compassionate and extremely weird. I didn't expect to like it. I don't like stories that include angels, dream sequences and long philosophical speeches. And the topic of AIDS in the 1980s was sure to be, I thought, depressing. I therefore only rented the first of the two-disk series and expected to only watch the first of the three episodes it contained. Three hours later, it was well past midnight and I was sorry I didn't have the second disk in my possession because I would have stayed up all night to watch it. It took another two days for me to get the second disk. And now that I've watched the whole thing, I'm certainly impressed.
First of all there is the star power. All Pacino is cast as the true-life lawyer Roy Cohn who really did die of AIDS in the eighties. He's one of those people we all love to hate, and hate him we do, right down to his painful death scene in which he dies angry and unrepentant. This is perhaps his finest role and he is absolutely fantastic.
Then there is Meryl Streep. She actually plays three different roles. I recognized her in two of them - as the Mormon mother of a gay son who has left his wife, and as the historical Ethel Rosenberg who Roy Cohn sent to her death in the 1950s. But it wasn't until the credits rolled until I realized she also was cast as the bearded rabbi who officiated at a funeral in the opening scene. Emma Thompson played multiple roles too. She's the understanding nurse as well as a homeless woman. But in her largest part, she's an angel. And, rest assured, she is no ordinary angel. She's angry and gutsy and passionate and wild. And even though I still don't like angel scenes and wished they would hurry up and end, I must admit that her acting was superb.
Justin Kirk plays the young gay man with AIDS. His performance is spectacular as we watch him go through all the phases of contemplating his death. His lover, Ben Shenkman, is weak. And so he runs away, deserting his companion and trying to find solace by starting a relationship with Patrick Wilson, a married Mormon attorney whose ethics have been compromised by Roy Cohn. Mary-Louise Parker is cast has Patrick Wilson's slightly insane wife. Jeffrey Wright is an angel who helps her out and he's also cast as a gay nurse who takes care of Roy Cohn. His performance is fantastic and I must say he's an actor to take note of.
There are six episodes in all. And all are not created equal. There are slow parts that bored me. And, true to my own tastes, I didn't like the scenes with the angels. But, taken as a whole, I was caught up in the artistry of the writer, director and actors. I also loved theme even though it was disturbing. It put me right back in the 1980s when the world was just discovering the awful specter of the AIDS crisis. It was set in a New York that I know and understand, including the politics of the time. It all seems like a long time ago. But I'm glad its essence has been captured on the screen. This is not a perfect series and it certainly isn't for everyone. But I certainly found it worthwhile and intriguing and definitely recommend it.